


I've got sunshine on a cloudy day

by Clones_and_gallifrey



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Bookstore AU, F/M, Found Families, Kidfic, Minor Character Death, Single Parents, coffee shop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-05 01:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12180009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clones_and_gallifrey/pseuds/Clones_and_gallifrey
Summary: "Jake Peralta crashes into her life two months later. It's been nine weeks of sadness and trying to process emotions with very little success, of barely sleeping, of blurry days packing up the pieces of Oscar’s old life through tear filled eyes and putting them into her car, filling up her spare room with boxes that no one can face unpacking."Amy's brother dies, and she is granted custody of her nephew, Oscar. Jake Peralta enters her life at precisely the wrong moment, and helps her to sort through the pieces of her new life.





	I've got sunshine on a cloudy day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dogworldchampion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogworldchampion/gifts).



> So, this is a late birthday fic for one of my absolute favourite people, Carrie (@the-pontiac-bandit)! Back in June, Carrie sent me a prompt which was something along the lines of ‘single parents meeting whilst dropping their kids off at school’, and I had an entirely different fic in mind, but then writer’s block hit me HARD and it didn’t end up getting written. So this loose, angsty interpretation is what I wound up writing instead. Carrie, this isn’t just a birthday fic, this is a big THANK YOU fic for being such a great friend, for making me smile on crappy days and listening to me whining all of the time. I know that you’re not having such a great time yourself right now, so I hope this fic cheers you up even if it’s just for a few mins. Anyway, you’ve got this, and you’re awesome, and I love you a whole lot.
> 
> Also, this fic is unbeta’d so please excuse any mistakes.

On Amy Santiago’s ninth birthday, she receives a rich purple book wrapped up in silver paper. It's a gift from her mom, who kisses her softly on the forehead and tells her that she had a book just like this when she was little. That some day, when Amy’s a lot older, she's going to find this book in a long-forgotten box somewhere and read it cover to cover, and compare the dreams she writes down now to how her life actually turns out. On that birthday, Amy also received the American girl doll she's been gazing at wistfully in the window of the department store for months, but her mom tells her that this fat little purple book is worth more than  _ anything in that whole store _ . Amy doesn't believe her, but she flicks through the soft pages and breathes in the new book scent, eyes flicking over the dark grey ink. It's a journal, of sorts, with diary pages and drawing sheets and a section filled with questions. What's her name, what does her house look like, who's her best friend, what does she want to do when she grows up?

Amy fills the book. She draws pictures of her family, squinting at the points of her crayons as she tries to capture the curve of her nose perfectly. She writes about her days, about her brother Manny stealing her sneakers and about winning the spelling bee. But the best part is filling out the questions. She writes about what she wants to be like in high school, what college major she’d like to pick, thinks about getting married some day and how many kids she wants to have, what job she would do, how big her house will be. 

Years later, Amy will look back on her ninth birthday as the start of the life plan. It evolves from the purple book, spilling into post it notes and A3 sheets of paper, into spreadsheets, into hardback, spiral bound, college ruled notebooks. The life plan is formulated from research, from learning, from movies, from tears, from the Parker pen she buys the day after she graduates from college. If she follows the life plan, she’ll be successful. And she will be happy. Through high school, to college, out into the real world, Amy follows the plan to the letter, working her way to becoming the owner of a small bookstore in Brooklyn. And then one day, the plan ceases to matter. 

 

The bad news comes with a phone call, as most bad news does. The bad news is her father, distant and crackly at the other end of the line, voice smaller than she's ever heard before. As soon as she answers, he sounds lost, and that's something her dad has never been before. But through the middle-of-the-night, terrible connection, he does. 

Her brother is gone. Manny, just like that. (He's barely older than her, took a long time to hit his growth spurt as a teenager so that for a few months, Amy was taller than him. They shared shoes and jackets and hurled insults across the gap between their bedrooms. Out of her seven brothers, he was the first one she told when she was getting picked on in seventh grade because she knew he'd help her fix it. Out of his seven siblings, she was the first one  _ he  _ told when he got suspended from school in his tenth grade rebellious phase, because he knew she'd help  _ him  _ fix it.) 

Manny had married his high school sweetheart Jessica, started his own business, and six years ago, become a father. It was taken away in an instant, in a car turning around a corner too quickly in the night. Firefighters had to pull the three of them from the car. Only Oscar, Amy’s nephew, had survived, and was in hospital getting patched up, Amy’s brother Luis by his side. 

Her dad tells her this, in his quiet voice, in the dead of night. He isn't crying, but Amy's never seen her Dad cry. He's one of those dads who only cries in private, anywhere away from the eyes of the people he loves. She knows it's some dumb thing about wanting to appear strong for them, and when he tells her about Manny it makes her want to stick her fist through a wall. This is his  _ son _ . Amy's thoughts are racing and she's ten seconds away from dropping the phone and screaming into her hands, but the first thing that comes into her head when he tells her is that he isn't crying. Doesn't he know that he doesn't have to be strong right now? This is Manny. This is her stupid older brother. The one smiling at her from the photo she can see on the wall out of the corner of her eye. That's what breaks her down, that picture. The one of him and Luis and Anthony and her, before Oscar was born. Eight or nine years ago. They'll never take another one again. 

 

Her parents’ house becomes a refuge. Amy takes up residence in her tiny old bedroom, buries herself in the worn green blankets that her parents bought when she was a kid, stares at the peach coloured walls which took over from the acid pink of childhood. It's changed, since she moved out. They’ve taken down all of her old posters, replaced the lamp that would only work if it was positioned at a certain angle, changed out the curtains for blinds. But it's still her room. It makes her whole soul ache, sitting by the window and replaying every single second she ever spent with Manny in this room, every time she threw something at the wall connecting her room with his and Anthony’s to get them to quit arguing or turn down their music. Two of her nieces take up the floor space with a futon. Distant family members and friends trickle into the house with flowers and tear stained faces, and Amy watches from her window, cross legged on the end of her bed, in the spot where she used to read. 

Oscar’s there when Amy arrives. He wasn’t hurt too badly in the accident, the doctors calling it a  _ lucky escape _ . He isn't saying a word, and Amy feels sick to her stomach. Oscar's one of Amy's many nephews, but he's her only godson. 

It was logical, she guesses, for Manny and Jessica to pick her. Jessica's an only child, and Manny and Amy have always been close (were always close. Were. Amy has trouble adjusting the wording in her mind). She's still surprised when they asked her, the words written on a card with baby elephants on the front. She says yes, of course, and she stands up in church at the christening and promises to always take care of Oscar, a tiny wriggling baby in her arms. She's kept her promise, up until now, and tried her best to be a good aunt and a good godmother. She's taken him to baseball games and watched him on weekends if his parents went out of town, she's bought him awesome birthday presents and tried to impart some kind of wisdom on him and always made sure he knows how loved he is. But now, her mom is reminding her in a whispered conversation over dinner preparations, that promise means something entirely different. That promise means taking care of Oscar, indefinitely. It means bringing him back to her apartment, registering him at a school nearby, making him dinner every night. Buying him a funeral suit. Amy drops the large wooden spoon into the soup they're making and can't find any words that make sense. 

 

Jake Peralta crashes into her life two months later. It's been nine weeks of sadness and trying to process emotions with very little success, of barely sleeping, of blurry days packing up the pieces of Oscar’s old life through tear filled eyes and putting them into her car, filling up her spare room with boxes that no one can face unpacking. It's been helping her parents and brothers (six brothers now. And she doesn't know how to process that. If someone asks how many she has, she doesn't know what to say. How to fill up the Manny sized gap in her life, her memories, her identity) to wade through Manny and Jessica's home. 

School doesn't happen, mainly because Oscar is refusing to speak, or because she hears him sobbing for hours in the night, or because he’ll barely eat.Or because, if she's honest, Amy isn't ready to drop him off in a strange building and leave him for six hours every day. They're still adjusting to each other, still trying to find some semblance of a routine in amongst the chaos. Days usually begin with untouched bowls of cereal and end with Oscar asleep against Amy's shoulder on the couch. 

She brings him to work with her instead of taking him to school, helps him wade through school books from the education section, watches him with Rosa as they create the new window display, or he sits in Mr Holt’s office and arranges the stationery. 

(Amy loves her bookstore. She rents a small corner of a building in the Ninety Nine complex, an old warehouse building which one Ray Holt had bought and converted into a small shopping complex, originally just housing Niko’s coffee shop downstairs, Judy’s linens, and the antique store that Mr Holt runs himself, with input from his husband in his free time outside of his work at Columbia. The bookstore was always a goal of Amy's, the shining centre of the life plan once she decided that joining the NYPD wasn't for her, but it took her a while to refine the logistics of the plan. Two years earlier, she happened to walk past the Ninety Nine Complex and bump into the owner, Mr Holt, seething at his phone about something called Wuntch, and for some reason, a reason that someone who believed in it might call fate, Amy stopped to talk to him. One week later, she was beginning the journey to the small bookstore.) 

 

Amy hasn't cried since the funeral. It's like her tears and sadness turned into something else, something hardened and rough which she can't break through. She thinks that it's down to business, maybe, down to running the bookstore and taking care of Oscar and trying to get him to say more than two words to her at once, and grocery shopping and calling her mom to make sure that she got out of bed today. She and Oscar are assigned a social worker, a peppy twenty something named Anna who speaks to Oscar in a sing song voice and suggests that Amy take him to therapy. She's about to turn it down without thought, a knee jerk reaction, but then she thinks about how she has no idea what she's doing, no idea how to really take care of a six-year-old. She's running solely on the belief and trust that her brother and his wife put into her when they named her the legal guardian, should anything happen to them. They're trusting her with their  _ son _ , the most precious thing in the world to them. So she's trying. But she's nowhere near able to have a real, emotional conversation with Oscar yet. They're barely afloat as it is. So maybe therapy is exactly what he needs. 

The therapist’s office is brightly coloured, the therapist herself comes highly recommended, and Amy speaks with her on the phone twice before Oscar’s first session. She explains to him where they're going whilst they're sitting on the couch one Saturday night, Chinese food on their laps, tells him that he's just going to be able to talk with someone, or draw pictures for her. That he can tell the therapist whatever he likes, and she'll listen. 

The preparation helps Oscar, Amy thinks, sitting in the waiting area with him, his hand in hers, and then squeezing him tight when he's called in. The session is thirty minutes, and Amy had promised him that she'd be right outside for the entirety of it if he needed, but once he's in the office she finds she can't sit still. She hasn't done that really, not since the earth shattering phone call. There's always been a tv playing or a book to read or accounts to sift through. 

“Hey,” she stands up, hearing the anxiety in her voice, “I need some air.” She tells the receptionist, “I'll be right outside if he needs me. It's- it's important he knows where I am, so that he doesn't feel abandoned. So, if he comes out, make sure he knows.” She says, her eyes locking with the receptionists, steely and firm. 

Amy's been reading books about raising foster kids, and kids with difficult pasts, and kids in therapy. None of them apply specifically to Oscar, but she uses an empty notepad to make lists of important things to remember, tips, and ideas. Most importantly, they all say, make sure the kid knows that they're loved. 

It's these thoughts that keep Amy distracted as she walks down two flights of stairs, through the lobby with the colourful array of plants, and out via the heavy doors at the front of the building. What snaps her out of her thoughts is the freezing cold substance hitting her square in the shoulder. 

“Oh my God,” it's a man, face a picture of shock, an array of ice cream cones in his hands. 

And now two of them are squashed onto her shoulder, the cold seeping through the fabric of her shirt and down to the exposed skin of her arm. For a moment, she stands there in the building’s green area between the glass door and the street. She thinks it's supposed to be a calming area, but so far it's been anything but. 

“ _ I'm so sorry, _ ” the man is apologising, eyes glued to the strawberry coloured staining on her shirt. “I  _ knew _ five cones was too many to carry,” he's wincing

“ _ Five _ ?” Amy's mad, sure, but she's also in disbelief that an adult man thought it was possible to carry five ice cream cones at once. One of them is a double scoop. “Everybody knows you can't carry five at once.” There's a folded tissue in her back pocket, mainly in case of an Oscar related eventuality. She uses it to half heartedly attempt to clean her soft grey shirt, going through cleaning methods in her mind in an attempt to think of one that might get rid of strawberry stains. 

“I know, I know, but I always get five, and this time I didn't have time to make two trips.” The man explains, the breeze blowing his curly hair into his face. 

“Ice creams in a therapist’s office?” 

“Sure,” he nods, like it's obvious. “One for me, one for Andy,” he gestures at the grey haired man at the main reception desk in the lobby, “one for Lucia on reception upstairs, one for Rey, and one for the good doc.”

“Rey?”

“Rey, short for Rachel. My kid,” he tells her, his voice flooded with pride. It's dumb, and not something she can avoid forever, but those two words hit Amy hard. She's flashing back to Manny in the hospital, tears flooding his eyes as he held a squirming newborn Oscar and  _ this is my kid. I'm a Dad.  _

“Cool.” Amy replies, lamely, screwing up the damp and useless tissue. “Well they're gonna melt, so…” she trails off, looking around for a trash can for the tissue. 

“Oh, yeah,” the man looks down at the cones, a little panic flashing across his face. 

“Maybe try not to walk into anyone else on your way up.” Amy quips, stepping past him. 

“Hey! You're the one who wasn't watching where they were going!” 

“And  _ you're  _ the one carrying five ice cream cones.” Amy gets the final word in, stepping onto the street, wondering why she feels like smiling when the shoulder of her t shirt is starting to stick to her skin. 

When Oscar's done with therapy, he comes out of the office looking a little scared, eyes darting around in search of his aunt. When he finds her, Amy's heart constricts in her chest a little at the way his face illuminates with relief. 

“Hey,” she walks towards him, throwing an arm around his shoulders. “How was that?” 

Oscar swallows, nervously looking around at the three others in the waiting area. “Ok.” He says. It's one word. It's not a breakthrough. It's just not one of his usual words. Amy's used to hearing ‘yes’ and ‘no’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. 

“So you wanna come back next week?” She asks as they head for the exit. 

“Maybe.”

“Ok, we can work with maybe.” The books told Amy not to make a big deal out of it, when Oscar started to speak more, which they all promised he would. She bites back her smile and her offer of celebratory cake. “What do you wanna eat tonight?” She settles on, expecting his usual shrug. 

“Pasta.” He says instead. 

  
  
  


Amy wonders about ice cream guy, as she's come to refer to him in her head, in passing, but doesn't dwell on him. It was nice to meet someone who has a kid in therapy and can smile about it, rather than the pinched faces of all of the other adults in that building. Mainly she's thinking about how he made her smile, and how difficult that is these days. She thinks she might see him at Oscar’s next therapy session, but in actuality, she doesn't have to wait that long. 

Niko’s gets a new employee. She finds out three days after therapy, stepping through the glass door and into the dark wood, sweet scented world of the coffee shop. Amy met Charles Boyle on the day she got the keys to the bookstore after he wandered in with a basket of muffins, beaming excitedly. Amy had picked up a muffin and taken a bite, thanking her new neighbour profusely and assuming they were chocolate flavoured. They weren't. Amy's since learnt to ask first, eat second. The coffee is great though, her usual order a safe bet. Since Oscar’s been coming to work with her everyday, Charles has been bringing a cup of hot chocolate every lunch time to the bookstore for him, free of charge. 

“Hey Charles,” Amy smiles at him, approaching the cash register, her hand wound with Oscar’s. Since ‘pasta’, he hasn't said much more, but she's still counting it as a breakthrough. 

“Amy!” Charles is beaming even more than usual. “There's someone I'd like you to meet.” He tugs at the edges of his green apron nervously, glancing over his shoulder to the employees only door. 

“Oh. Who?” It's not that she doesn't trust him, it's just that sometimes the things that Charles gets excited about are difficult for other people to get excited about. Last week, it was a shipment of a spice that made Amy want to throw up. 

Charles reaches back and kicks the door, eyes turning a little wild. “I said  _ there's someone I'd like you to meet _ .” He repeats. 

“Huh? Charles, I heard y-” Amy begins, but then the door tears open. Oscar grips her hand tighter. 

“Did I miss the cue?” Oh. It's ice cream guy. 

“Kinda!” Charles’ voice has increased in pitch. 

“Strawberry syrup!” Ice cream guy is staring at her, eyes wide. 

“What?” Charles blinks between them. 

“Ice cream guy.” Amy narrows her eyes a little. The t-shirt had been ruined. 

“You know each other?” Charles deduces, sounding disappointed. 

“I uh… there was an ice cream incident,” ice cream guy confesses. 

“Oh Jakey. What did you do?” Charles asks, the use of ice cream guys name not lost on Amy. 

“ _ Jakey  _ here spilled two of his five ice cream cones all over me.” Amy supplies. 

“ _ Dammit _ ,” Charles frowns at Jake and then mumbles something under his breath about first impressions. Over his shoulder, Jake just shrugs at her, pulling a face that forces her to bite back a laugh.

 

Amy’s pretty sure that Charles is trying to set them up. She’s been pretty sure about that since she walked into his coffee shop in the morning and saw the gleam in his eye when Jake stepped out, but she’s almost certain now. 

It starts with him bringing two paper cups into her store mid morning, one filled with hot chocolate, ‘Oscar’ scribbled on the side in Charles’ italic scrawl, and one slightly taller with her own name on the paper sleeve. It’s a latte, double shot, a lopsided foam heart on the top. It’s the kind that Amy orders when she wants to treat herself to something beyond her normal hot coffee with cream and one sugar. Jake’s also equipped with an Avengers addition of Uno, freshly purchased from Jeffords Junction, the toy store that Terry, ex coffee shop employee, opened up, sandwiched between Judy’s linens and the coffee shop itself. Oscar loves the Avengers, and there’s no way that Jake could have known this unless Charles told him. She wonders how  _ much  _ Charles told Jake. Does he know about her brother dying, about who Oscar is to her, that she’s raising her nephew and her godson? Part of her wants him to know everything, because then she’ll never have to explain it herself, never have to face that particular kind of awkward situation. The other, maybe stronger, part of her, is praying that he doesn’t know. Maybe because she doesn’t want everyone in the world to look at her and Oscar differently. There are enough people who do that. Good, well-meaning people, with voices flecked with sympathy, or people who think they’re better than them, looking down their noses at the two of them. She isn’t sure how Oscar feels about it all, hasn’t found any way to broach the subject, but Amy prefers kind smiles from strangers who haven’t the slightest idea how they’re related.

She guesses he doesn’t know, though, when he refers to Amy as Oscar’s mom. It’s an offhand comment, Jake asking Oscar whether his mom would mind if they sat at the little table at the back of the store and played a round of Uno whilst Jake was on his break. Amy freezes for a second at the question, eyes stuck on Oscar as he turns to her, a questioning expression on his face. Amy waves them off, not bothering to correct Jake, and leans against the counter to overthink the whole thing.

It isn’t the first thing Amy’s been referred to as Oscar’s mom. The first time it was the cashier at Subway, one week after Oscar moved in, and they both freeze in place until Amy chokes out a thank you and they leave the store. It’s just this is the first time the word ‘mom’ has been uttered by someone other than a stranger. Something other than a passing interaction. This is the first time she’s realising that this is their life now. That eventually, when Oscar goes back to school, people there are going to think she’s his mom. His teachers and his friends and maybe, one day, girls or boys he gets crushes on will think she’s his mom. They even share the same last name, right now. Amy adds it to the mental list of things she needs to talk to Oscar about.

 

Charles keeps finding more ways to push them together over the next few weeks. There’s the time that Amy and Oscar enter the coffee shop in the morning and Charles ducks out of sight immediately with a loud squeak, which echoes around the store, only to be replaced by Jake ten seconds later. There’s the fact that Jake brings lattes and hot chocolates every day mid-morning. After three days, he brings Rosa’s coffee order too. Amy suspects it’s because he’s a little scared of her. Jake always stays for the entirety of his fifteen minute break, sometimes talking to Amy, or showing a customer around as if he himself works there, or playing uno with Oscar or helping Oscar with his school work. (he never asks why Oscar isn’t in school. Maybe because he met Amy at Oscar’s therapist’s office, or because he's a Dad himself, or just because it doesn't matter to him.) Once, he just sat by the counter on the phone to his daughter, Rey, for the whole time. 

“She's not doing so great,” Jake explains, ending the call with the end of his break. 

Amy's scared to ask, so she doesn't. She squeezes his shoulder and loses herself amongst the shelves of the store, passing Rosa and Oscar arranging young adult novels in alphabetical order, reaching the section she wants and picking out a heavy red volume. She hands it to Jake with a smile that she hopes is able to convey what she can't find the words for. 

  
  
  


It becomes a thing after that. They trade coffee and books, foamed milk for ink and paper. Amy becomes something of a guinea pig, Jake bringing her Charles’ latest ventures. There's hazelnut and toffee latte, hot chocolate with cilantro, spiced apple tea. Some of them she devours, drawing a smiley face on the cup before she hands it back to Jake, some of them she refuses from the smell alone. In return, she hands Jake books. He's not a big reader, he confesses, so she gives him books for Rey.

“Look at this,” Jake waves his phone in front of her nose one Monday lunch, surprising Amy as she’s waving goodbye to a customer. 

“Woah,” Amy leans away from the bright light of the phone, trying to focus on the blurry image. “What is it?” 

“She loved this one,” Jake says, and it’s a video. He leans against the counter whilst Amy leans over it, her eyes flickering to a corner of the shop where Oscar is standing with Terry and his wife and their youngest daughter, Ava, looking through some of the picture books. 

Jake presses play, and it’s a thirty second video of him with a dark haired little girl, curls framing her face, as she reads from the bright volume on the table in front of her. It’s the Chronicles of Narnia, and Amy had handed it to Jake on Friday, raising her eyebrows at him babbling to Rosa about a mouse he’s in direct contest with over the meat supreme pizza at a place called Sal’s. Amy watches the phone as Rey reads a few lines with a giant grin on her face, the Jake on the screen watching his daughter with pride shining in his eyes.

“My mom filmed us,” he explains, before Amy could wonder. 

“I knew she’d like it,” Amy says, although she’s yet to meet Rey.

She watches as Jake flicks through a few images on his phone before he puts it away, ones of Rey, and Charles, and a dark haired older woman with glasses. It’s clear, in every picture, how much he loves his daughter. Amy hasn’t taken any pictures with Oscar since Manny and Jessica died, but she wonders, regardless, how she looks at Oscar when she isn’t thinking about it. If someone captured in a photo, would they capture the fear rooted in her chest, too? Or would they just capture the fact that they’re both just doing their best and praying it’s enough?

“What are you getting for lunch?” Jake asks, fingers tapping distractedly on the countertop. Amy’s fiddling with her ponytail, pulling it tighter.

“I don’t know. I’m not ready for any more of Charles’ culinary experiments,” Amy wrinkles her nose, glancing in the general direction of the coffee shop.

“How about the meatball truck?” Rosa asks, joining their conversation. There’s a meatball truck on the lot outside of the building. 

“Isn’t that kind of gross?” Amy’s never eaten there, but she swears she once saw one of the owners drop a basket of meatballs on the ground and then proceed to eat them all. 

“C’mon, Ames, live a little,” Jake pokes her shoulder. “What do you say we make it interesting?” Jake looks between Amy and Rosa, who exchange a suspicious glance.

“What are we talking?” Rosa asks, folding her arms.

“First one to…” Jake thinks, screwing his face up in over the top concentration.

“First one to get one of the meatball guys to eat a meatball from the ground wins.” Amy jumps in, voice a little too loud. She draws the attention of Terry and Sharon, who both throw her an equally confused look.

“Oh Amy. I didn’t know you had that in you,” Jake’s shaking his head but also looking strangely proud. 

“Nice,” Rosa hits her on the arm.

“Let’s do it.” Jake claps his hands together, and they get ready to leave.

 

The lunch is a success, despite the fact that none of them get either of the meatball guys, Hitchcock and Scully, to eat a meatball from the ground. Amy and Rosa shut the bookstore for twenty minutes over lunch, and manage to get Terry, Sharon, Charles, Doug Judy from Judy’s linens, and Mr. Holt to join them, although they leave out the part about the bet. Some of the items on the meatball truck menu look a little weird, but Amy sticks to a meatball sub, getting one for Oscar too, and the nine of them sit around a couple of picnic benches at the front of the building. It’s not a warm day, but they zip up their jackets and talk about nothing in particular. Charles takes a selfie, holding the phone up in the air and getting them all in frame, passing it around for everyone to see after. Amy lingers on the tiny images of her and Oscar, both dark haired with eyes squinting against the sun, her hand on his back. They look like they’re doing ok. 

 

Slowly, unexpectedly, Oscar’s voice returns. It starts with a broken shelf in the store, bowing under the weight of a stack of physics textbooks as Amy loads them on. It’s an old shelf, but she’s only half paying attention, the other half focusing on Oscar and Mr. Holt, sitting on the beanbags and going over some math work. The shelf snaps and the books scatter on the ground, some of them almost landing on Amy’s feet, so she gasps and steps back quickly, waiting for them to land. 

Oscar’s there in half a second, his hands reaching for her arms.

“You ok?” He asks, almost in a whisper. Amy's surprised, so surprised that she has to consciously stop her eyes from widening at him. But she remembers the books, and if there's one thing she's always been it's good at following directions from books. 

“I'm good,” she tells Oscar, smiling at him. 

 

The second time it's Jake’s fault. Amy needs a new shelving unit to replace the broken one, so on Sunday, when the store is shut, she and Oscar eat Cheerios for breakfast and then make their way to IKEA. Amy's still not a big fan of being in the apartment doing nothing, because it gives them both time to dwell on the gaping hole which has opened up in both of their lives. (The grief isn't lessening, and Amy had never been able to understand it so acutely before. The words of other people weren’t enough to make her understand the way the grief makes its home inside of you, and how some days it’s darker than others. But it always weighs the same.) 

10:17

_ Text message from: Jake Peralta _

What r u doing today? Rey won't sit still pls help

Amy's phone lights up from its place on the ground by her shoe. They're getting ready to leave, Oscar pulling the Velcro of his blue shoes tight. She rolls her eyes, biting back a smile despite herself, and tried to remember when she gave Jake her number. Amy knows that Jake likes to take Rey to the park, that they play a lot of basketball together, but that isn't an option on a cold, drizzly day like today. 

10:20

_ Text message to: Jake Peralta _

Ikea. How did you get my number? More importantly, how did your number get saved in my phone? 

10:22

_ Text message from: Jake Peralta _

U asked for my number bc u have a crush on me

Amy stops herself from rolling her eyes again, wondering when exactly their conversations began to dissolve into this casual, sarcastic back and forth. (Rosa had called it flirting. Amy had shot her a dirty look.) 

10:23

_ Text message to: Jake Peralta _

You just keep telling yourself that. 

10:23

_ Text message from: Jake Peralta _

Mkay. 

“Are we going?” Amy jumps this time, from her place beside their front door, caught up in her phone. Oscar is looking up at her eagerly, and he just  _ spoke _ , yet again. She's going to have to stop being surprised by it. 

“Yeah, of course. Let's go.” 

 

10:26

_ Jake Peralta sent a picture _

Amy brings up the picture as they walk down the street. It's a screenshot of google maps from his phone, IKEA programmed in as the set location. 

 

Amy goes into IKEA with a plan to get straight to the shelving units, pick one up, buy hotdogs, and then leave. She doesn't want to spend the whole of her day off there. She also doesn't want to spend a whole afternoon at home, so she decides they'll hit up a museum or something. If she's homeschooling Oscar, she knows she should probably be taking him to as many different places as possible to learn in. It's been a while since Amy's had any time to visit any of the museums, so she figures this is a good opportunity. 

The plan is ruined by Jake’s picture text, because she spends the time walking around the store looking over her shoulder, convinced he's about to pop up from behind a plant or inside a wardrobe. 

Amy's admiring a selection of fuzzy blankets, wondering about buying one for Oscar’s room (it's still bare, but the thought of decorating it is fretting easier), when it happens. 

“Ma’am, I'm going to have to ask you to put that down.” A store assistant tells Amy, voice very quiet. She looks up to find a woman with reddish hair and a condescending smile. 

“Huh? Why?” Amy asks, backing away all the same. 

“You were in direct violation of code six-three-one.”

“What?” Amy squints, and Oscar shuffles awkwardly in front of her. 

“Hmm, I'm going to have to ask you to leave the store,” she folds her arms over her chest and Amy feels her blood run cold. She's never been asked to leave a store before. Amy Santiago does not get asked to leave stores. She's a good customer, and she always follows the rules. Her dad’s a cop, she would never knowingly do anything to get thrown out of a store. 

Her thoughts are spiralling and her feet are frozen to the spot when “Aunt Gina? Where did you get that badge?” A small girl with dark hair, falling in curls past her shoulders, approaches. Amy’s sure that she recognises her, but can't put her finger on why. 

“I'm an employee,” the woman hisses through a forced smile. 

“No you're not. You just disappeared five minutes ago,” the girl throws her hands up the air. 

“ _ Cmon Rachel! _ Help me out here kid,” the woman gestures at Amy and Oscar. 

“Rey?” Amy knows  _ that  _ voice. It's Jake. And he's not appearing from a wardrobe or under a desk like some kind of troll, he's just strolling up the aisle towards them. Towards… Rey.  _ Rey _ . That's how Amy recognises her- from the pictures. And oh, she's meeting Jake's kid. Why is she suddenly nervous? 

“Dad, Aunt Gina’s being weird,” Rey frowns at the woman, who Amy guesses is called Gina. 

“Oh God,” Jake stops in his tracks, and he's just seen Amy and Oscar. He looks between them and Gina, some kind of realisation dawning on him. “ _ Gina. I told you not to _ ,” his voice has gone about five octaves too high.

“I'm just getting to know her, boo,” Gina tells him. 

“Uh,” Amy has questions. She isn't sure which to ask first. 

“Amy. Oscar,” Jake nods at them, in motion again. “Where did you even  _ get  _ that?” Jake narrows his eyes at Gina’s badge. Amy realises that she definitely isn't a real employee, and she definitely isn't actually being kicked out of the store. 

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” 

“Not even gonna touch that,” Jake says, pulling Rey closer to him. “Rey, this is Amy, the one who's been sending the books.”

“Story lady!” Rey’s eyes widen in delight, and Amy's heart melts a little. 

“I've heard a lot about you,” Amy tells her, reaching out to shake her hand. Rey takes it carefully, like it might be breakable. 

“And this is Oscar,” Jake holds out his hand to fist bump Oscar, who bumps him with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. 

“And I'm Gina Linetti. Human form of the one hundred emoji.”

 

The IKEA trip spirals from an organised visit to something else entirely. They pick out the shelving unit but then they stumble into the kids section, and somehow it dissolves into fort building in the display bedrooms, Amy and Rey against Jake and Oscar, with Gina playing as a one woman team. They stack blankets and pillows into forts and then used stuffed animals as ammo in something reminiscent of the snowball fights Amy had as a kid. She would always be on the same side as Manny, and usually their side would win. 

Amy's half terrified that she will be asked to leave for real this time, but the grin on Oscar’s face and the giggles from Rey are enough to distract her. There's no clear winner, but Jake dramatically dives in front of Oscar to save him from a tiny stuffed lizard, thrown by Gina, and somehow they all agree that that signifies the end of the game. 

After that they pick out some new curtains and pillows for Rey’s room, and when Amy asks Oscar whether he’d like anything for his, he picks out a large stuffed snake and a Captain America poster, so Amy buys them too. 

They end the day with hotdogs and sodas and plans to go to a museum the following Sunday. When they get home, Amy hangs the Captain America poster, and it feels like something has changed. 

  
  


“They think you're my mom,” Oscar tells her before work that week.

Amy is poring over a bunch of organisational charts from a homeschool website. Maybe he's ready to go back to school, maybe not, but when she'd asked him he'd screwed up his nose, and she still doesn't want to leave him for six hours a day, five days of the week. 

“Huh?” The radio is on, and his words had been mixed in with notes from an upbeat song. She's getting more used to his talking, learning not to tread on eggshells around his voice. 

“Jake and Rey think you're my mom.”

“Oh.” Amy had been afraid of this conversation. She knows she should have told Jake. She knows she should have talked to Oscar about it. There's a lot of things she should have done. But she's  _ trying _ . “How… how do you feel? About that?” Amy turns the radio down 

“You're not her,” Oscar says quietly, pressing his lips together to form a thin line. He doesn't cry, aside from when he's alone at night and thinks she can't hear him. But now Amy wonders whether this thing she's been avoiding has been making him even more upset. 

“I know. I know I'm not. And I miss her. I miss them.” This is hard, talking about them with him. It's another thing she's been avoiding. The books tell her that sometimes you have to walk directly through the pain, but Amy's been taking the long way around to avoid it. 

“It's ok,” Oscar says, and Amy isn't quite sure what he means. Which part of this is ok. “You’d make a good mom.”

She isn't sure what he means by that either, but she's pretty sure it's a good thing. In response, she kisses the top of his head. 

  
  


The therapy continues. Amy doesn't see Jake there every week, but when she drops it casually into conversation he tells her that Rey’s time slot varies a little from week to week. Amy can't help but wonder, with a natural human curiosity, why Rey goes to therapy. She's guessed that it's something to do with her mom, being that she never even comes up in conversation, but Jake must be curious about why Oscar goes and he's never even hinted at asking why, so Amy doesn't either. When she does see him there, though, she helps him carry the ice creams, buys one for Oscar, and they sit together in a sugar infused solidarity. 

  
  


Gina becomes a permanent fixture in their every day, taking the form of Mr Holt’s personal assistant. After Rosa meets her for the first time, she stares very intently at the academic text books lining the new shelving unit for fifteen minutes until Amy figures out why. 

“Don't say a word,” Rosa warns her, when Amy starts looking at her with realisation swimming in her eyes. 

“What? I… you don't… the…”

“You want to talk about what's going on with you and Jake?”

“Me and  _ Jake _ ? The coffee guy? Why would you…?” Amy splutters, looking around to make sure that no one is listening to their conversation. No one is, Mr Holt took Oscar outside, and everyone else in the complex was working in their respective stores. 

In response, Rosa just raises her eyebrows. 

 

There's nothing  _ going on  _ between them, Amy tells herself. She's only known Jake for a few weeks, and they've both got bigger things to think about than this. Amy's brain is too full up with her new finances spreadsheet, extra rows added for the expensive, child sized addition to her life. Her thoughts are occupied with home school schedules, new stock for the bookstore, and an entire case of panic about whether or not Oscar is going to grow up to be well adjusted, or whether this is going to damage him forever. That means there's no room for thoughts about how the only time she laughs so hard she can't breathe is with Jake, or how sometimes he looks at her a certain way and it makes her heart skip, or about how when she's with him, she feels like maybe everything is going to be ok.

 

“Meatball bet, round two,” Jake announces, the Monday after a visit to MOMA - Jake, Rey, Amy, and Oscar. (Jake had spent most of the misinterpreting the art to Rey and Oscar - “And that’s a… cat, flying on a potato, in space.”)

“Oh wow Jake, are you finally ready to lose to me?” Amy teases, accepting the coffee he’s carrying. He places Rosa’s on an empty shelf. 

“Amy, Amy, Amy. The bigger question is, are  _ you _ ready?”

“I was born ready,” She counters.

“To lose. That was the question. And you said you were born that way.”

“C’mon,” She rolls her eyes, tugging Jake towards the back room. 

“Amy, you are  _ on shift _ ,” he jokes, still managing to earn the shocked expression of an older lady, browsing in the craft book section.

Amy leads him back through the employees only door to the storage area, where there is a large whiteboard stuck up on the wall, dry erase pens magnetically stuck to the edges of it.

“If we’re doing this, we do it properly,” Amy says, picking up a blue pen and ripping the cap off. Jake takes a step back, watching as Amy draws a horizontal line near the top, and a vertical line slashing through it, creating a chart. She writes ‘Jake’ on one side and then ‘Amy’ on the other.

“Wow,” Jake folds his arms across his chest, smirking at Amy. She turns back to face him, her breath catching in her throat at the way he’s looking at her. She tells herself it’s nothing, that he just didn’t expect her to be this committed to the bet. 

“The person who makes the meatball guys eat the most fallen meatballs wins,” Amy confirms.

“What are the rules here?” 

“If one of them drops a meatball whilst serving you, you get a point.”

“Do the meatballs have to be eaten from the  _ ground _ ?”

“Hmm,” Amy considers, “no. They just have to fall somewhere. Could be the counter.”

“Ok. And what are the stakes?” Jake wants to know. Amy hasn’t thought that far.

“Uhh…”

“Loser takes the winner out to dinner?” Jake suggests, speaking quickly. Amy pauses, wondering if she’s understanding him correctly. Whether he’s suggesting that they go out to eat together. Whether he means just the two of them, or with friends, or with Oscar and Rey. Whether it could be a date.

“Mmhmm,” Amy nods, unsure what to say. “Sounds great. Sounds like some great stakes right there. Yup.”

“Ok,” Jake nods, too. “We’ll do that then. Sounds perfect.”

“Fantastic.”

“Prepare to be beaten, Santiago.”

“In your dreams, Peralta.”

 

The bet lasts for three weeks, and somehow, by the end of it, every single employee in the Ninety Nine Complex is involved in one capacity or another. It starts on the first day, when Rosa follows Jake, Amy, and Oscar out to the meatball truck at lunch time and quickly catches on to what they’re doing, folding her arms and smiling smugly at Amy. When Jake fails to make either Hitchcock or Scully drop a meatball and walks back into the building with his order, Rosa murmurs something at Amy that sounds suspiciously like  _ told you so _ .

It takes four days for either of them to be successful, and it’s largely due to Doug Judy. Everyone at the Complex quickly takes a side, some because they want one of them to win, such as Charles wanting Jake to win, and others because they want one of them to lose. Doug Judy and Jake have developed some kind of weird rivalry since Jake started at Niko’s, and now Judy is determined to watch Jake lose. On the day that he decides to get involved, Jake tells Amy that this is his day, the day he gets his first point, but then when they get out to the meatball truck there is a third member of the meatball team, stirring sauce with a ladle. It’s Judy, and neither Hitchcock nor Scully can give any reason for why he’s there, but neither seem to be eager for him to leave, either. He spends the five minutes that they serve Jake in watching the meatballs closely, and when one does, finally, fall to the ground, Judy catches it before it hits, smugly throwing it into the trash, despite the disappointed look on Scully’s face. He then spends Amy’s turn ordering haphazardly preparing the meatballs, and when another one falls to the ground he blatantly ignores it. It’s a tense few seconds as Hitchcock and Scully exchange glances, both diving for it at the same time. It’s Scully who reaches it, eating it in a single bite. Jake argues that it’s cheating, but Amy points out that nowhere in the rules did it say anything about involving others.

Charles has a different tactic, ordering alongside Jake and then loudly discussing, through clenched teeth, the benefits of eating food from the ground to the immune system. He looks disgusted at himself, and spends the rest of his lunch break shaking his head in shame. 

Mr Holt is on Amy’s side, entirely by accident. He stands between Jake and Amy as Jake orders, on the tense penultimate day of competition, and grows more and more confused at Jake’s attempts to get them to drop a meatball. When Hitchcock does drop one, both Jake and Amy gasp, freezing in place. They’re tied at four meatballs apiece, and this could push Jake into a last minute lead, but:

“What are you  _ doing _ ?” Mr Holt asks as the meatball is an inch from Hitchcock’s mouth. Neither Jake nor Amy expect him to stop, but he does. 

“What?” He turns to Mr Holt. 

“That’s been on the ground, where you’ve been walking. Why would you do that?” Mr Holt is gesturing wildly between the meatball and the ground, his face a picture of horror. “I see what you two are doing,” he adds, now looking between Jake and Amy. “And you should stop. It violates about fifteen hygiene codes.”  

 

“So, we have to stop now,” Amy announces in whispers, back in the bookstore.

“What? Why?” Jake’s confused, picking at his meatball sub. They’re both pretty sick of meatballs, at this point. 

“We made Mr Holt  _ mad _ . That can’t happen,” Amy shakes her head rapidly, eyes wide. “I’m nothing without him, Jake,  _ nothing _ ,” she slams her water bottle down on the counter as if to emphasise her point.

“Well, that’s not true. He didn’t build this store, Ames, you did. But that’s besides the point,” he waves a hand vaguely. “The stakes are even  _ higher _ now. Two rogue retail employees embarking on an under the radar bet. This is the stuff of fiction, Amy.” 

“Huh?” (Her heart doesn’t sink a tiny bit when he reverts back to Amy, from the casual  _ Ames _ . Nope.)

“Haven’t you ever seen Die Hard?”

“What does Die Hard have to do with…. Any of this?” Amy wrinkles her nose. Jake considers her question for a second, expression a little blank.

“John McClane beat the odds, ok?”

“Oh.”

“So it’s decided. One more round?”

Amy frowns. The rational part of her wants her to say no, knows that this is a bad idea. Mr Holt is her mentor, and this whole complex is his. What he says, goes. But on the other hand, this dumb meatball bet has made both her and Jake happy. It’s been a welcome distraction. And she’s not going to pretend that she hasn’t enjoyed spending the time with Jake. 

“ _ One _ more,” Amy agrees, through gritted teeth.

 

They don’t get their final round. They set it for the next day, but they don’t get that opportunity. 

 

Jessica's parents are flying in from Florida that day to see Oscar. They came for the funeral but didn't stay much beyond that, checking in on Amy and Oscar via email. At the start of this whole thing Amy had struggled with the emails, struggled to try to make it sound like they were doing ok, afraid that if they knew the truth they would get on the first plane to New York and take their grandson back to their sun bleached bungalow by the ocean. (Some says that sounds like the right solution, at first, because  _ she can't do this.  _ But Jessica and Manny thought she could. So she persists). Recently, she's been telling them about the museum trips and the homeschool schedule and how well Oscar’s been getting on with Rey, and now they've decided to come for a visit. The cynical part of Amy wonders if it's because they couldn't handle all of the emotions before. That they're only coming now because everyone has allowed themselves to smile again. 

“Be good, ok?” Amy tells Oscar as they wait in the store that afternoon. She can't stop pacing. Oscar is sitting on the countertop swinging his legs back and forth. She isn't sure why she's telling him to be good, because so far, since his parents died, he's been nothing  _ but  _ good. He wasn't always like that though, and frequently Amy wishes he'd throw something across a room or yell in public. That would have to be a sure sign that he's ok again. 

“I will,” Oscar nods. Amy peers out of the door of the store and sees two dark haired older people weaving their way through the customers on the ground floor. It's Jessica's parents. 

“Ok they're here,” she’s nervous. Almost as nervous as she was when she dropped Oscar off at therapy that first day. 

Mostly she's nervous for Oscar. What if they grill him or yell at him for not talking much? What if they take him some place to eat that he doesn't like? What if they do something to upset him? 

A smaller part of her is nervous that Oscar will step out of the complex with them and immediately break down and tell them that Amy is a terrible aunt and that he doesn't want to live with her anymore. That would break her heart. But honestly, she knows it would break into smaller pieces if they did anything to upset Oscar. She just wants him to be happy, whether or not that's with her. 

“I love you,” she tells him, kissing the top of his head. She could spiel a pep talk at him for ten whole minutes about the evening he's going to be spending with his grandparents. Or she could just tell him she loves him, and hope that he understands how much she means it. 

“Love you, too,” he smiles at her, and there's a smear of chocolate from the peanut butter cups he ate after lunch on the side of his nose. She doesn't know how it got there, but she's looking at his smile and the way it reaches his eyes and she thinks her heart could burst from the sight. She loves this kid more than anything else in the world, and she would go to the ends of the earth for him. But right now, she's scrubbing at the chocolate on his face with her shirt sleeve as he squirms, and flashing back to when her mom used to do this to her when she was Oscar’s age. 

 

Jessica's parents beam at Oscar and then tell Amy that he should be in school, that he should be associating with kids his own age and not hanging out with adults all of the time. She knows. She knows he's getting better with his speech and he's stopped waking up in the night crying and he's eating well, but she can't bring herself to enrol him. It's going to be a whole thing of looking into schools close to their apartment, and finding out reviews for them, and visiting them and god, she shouldn't be doing this. Oscar’s  _ parents  _ should be doing this. Amy isn't even sure what makes a good school and what makes a bad one, and what if she makes the wrong decision? What if Oscar hates it and he gets picked on and his life gets plain miserable?

She's spiralling. Rosa brings her a peppermint tea from Niko’s to calm her down before she clocks off for the day, leaving Amy to sit in the store by herself well after closing time. A few months ago, she couldn't stand the idea of going back to the apartment with Oscar, of sitting there in silence and not knowing what to say or how to make him feel better. The thing was, there  _ was  _ no way to make him, or herself, feel better. She knows that now. She's learnt that Star Wars movies work miracles at distracting them both, she's learnt when Oscar wants to talk about how he's feeling and when he wants to talk about something else and when he doesn't want to talk at all. She's learnt about his favourite foods and which jokes make him laugh. 

Now, the apartment is going to be empty without him. He’ll be back by nine, but that's hours of painful silence away, so Amy picks up an old favourite book from the shelves and sits down to read, listening to the soft music over the complex speakers, and the background hum of the cleaners at work, and Mr Holt on the phone downstairs with some supplier. 

It gets to seven when Amy stands up and walks around, stretching her legs. Niko’s should be closed but she can still see a light on down there. She squints, trying to see whether someone's still inside or whether they've just left a light on by mistake. There's an energy saving initiative in force for the whole complex, so if they have left a light on it goes against procedure. Amy figures she should go and see and call Charles if it's still on. 

 

It's Jake. He's whistling while he works, writing something down on a clipboard, and Amy's standing in the doorway smiling at him. He's taken his apron off and is wearing jeans and a plaid button down, has the music on the radio turned up a little too loud. 

“Are you going to break into song?” She calls over the upbeat tones of a One Direction song.

Jake jumps a little, spinning around to face her and breaking into a smile when he sees her. “Amy, Amy, Amy. Come to practice for the meatball bet?” 

“I don't need to practice, I already know I'm gonna win,” she shrugs. It's amazing how a few seconds around him can make her feel calmer. That's a power that only a handful of people in her life have. One person who could do that well was Manny. 

“That overconfidence is gonna be your downfall,” he shakes his head at her. Amy rolls her eyes and steps into the store, walking to the counter and leaning against it. “Where's Oscar?” Jake looks at the doorway as if expecting him to wander in at any moment. “And why are you here so late?”

“I-” Amy's about to tell him. She's about to tell him that Oscar has gone with Jessica's parents. But Jake doesn't  _ know.  _ He doesn't know that Oscar’s her nephew, not her kid. And she wants him to know now, but it feels like some big secret, like it's gone beyond a simple omission and into plain  _ lie  _ territory.

“Ames?” Jake looks concerned, and Amy realised that she's frowning intently at the ground. 

“Jake. I haven't… Oscar…” there's no easy way to phrase this. 

“Amy.” He reaches for her, hand hovering centimetres from hers. There's something in the air between them, a specific kind of tension. Amy looks up again and Jake is leaning across the counter too, smiling in a reassuring way. “It's ok. I know about Oscar. I know you're his aunt.” He's speaking quietly, gently. The voice everyone used around Oscar right after his parents died. 

Amy feels her heart constrict in her chest. “Oh.” Heat rises up in her cheeks as she tries to figure out what this means. She feels like an idiot. Mostly because she should have told him, should have just dropped it into casual conversation a long time ago. It would have been so easy. Partly because Jake already  _ knows _ . And he could have asked her or mentioned it, but instead he probably thinks she's some kind of prolific liar. “How… how long have you known?” Amy pulls back from the counter. From Jake. 

“Uh… Charles told me. By accident!” He adds hastily, standing up straight on the other side of the counter, across from her. “I had only known you for a week or so,” he shrugs. “But he just accidentally let it slip. And he felt  _ terrible  _ about it, believe me. Didn't you notice there was, like, a week when he was avoiding you? He couldn't even look you in the eye!” Amy shakes her head. “He literally dived into the back room once when he saw you coming in,” Jake chuckles at the memory. Amy isn't sure what to say. Where they go from here. “But it's not a big deal. It… Charles didn't tell me a lot. Just that you're his aunt and you take care of him, and that's all I need to know, Ames. I think you're doing something incredible, and you don't need to say any more than you want to say.” Jake takes a step back. 

“It's not.” Amy hears herself saying. 

There's a moment of silence between them as Amy rounds the counter and slithers onto the ground, back against the server’s side of the counter. Jake hesitates for a second but then joins her. They sit, shoulders pressing together, Amy's knees drawn to her chest, Jake’s feet pressing up against the wall on the other side. 

“It's not incredible,” Amy shakes her head. “I'm his aunt, and his godmother. His parents died, and I was his named guardian. And on paper that seemed like such a  _ normal  _ thing to be, you know? Everyone has Godparents. They take you out for ice cream and watch you when your parents go on weekend breaks. They love you, and you love them, and they're important parts of your life. They aren't… this isn't…” Amy’s saying everything. All of the words that she didn't know she needed to say out loud. Months of thoughts and anxiety and blind panic. “My brother died, and then I'm taking a kid home with me after the funeral. And I have no idea what I'm doing,” she hisses the last part through gritted teeth, difficult to admit it. “He's with Jessica's, his mom’s, parents now and  _ they  _ think I'm doing a horrible job.”

“Amy,” Jake’s hand twitches from its place on his thigh. Amy wants to take hold of it and squeeze it tight, just for something solid and real and comforting to hold onto. “You love Oscar. You love him and you take care of him as best you can. You're there for him. That's all you need to do. That's all you  _ can  _ do. And he loves you, any idiot can see that.” 

“He has to love me, I'm his aunt,” Amy points out. 

“He doesn't  _ have  _ to love you. But you're not screwing up his childhood, nerd. You're really good at this.”

“You think?” Amy asks, hopefully. She isn't sure if she believes him right now, but it's reassuring to hear someone tell her she's doing ok. 

“Yeah,” he assures her, nodding slowly. “God, Ames, you think I knew what I was doing when Rachel was born?”

“She thinks you hung the moon,” Amy points out. 

“My relationship with Rey’s mom wasn't easy,” Jake says, looking away from Amy and leaning his head back against the counter. Amy's almost afraid to breathe, scared to stop him from telling her. She wants to know, some basic human curiosity driving her, but she only wants to know if Jake is ready to tell her, on his terms. “Her name was Sophia. And we had only been dating for six months when she found out she was pregnant. We weren't exactly thrilled, at first, but then I started to get excited about it, about being a dad. I thought she was excited about being a mom, too,” he continues, frowning a little now. “She wanted to move to Boston, she had some family there and had lived there for a few years as a teenager. It was kind of a crazy move, but we did it together,” he shrugs. 

Amy can't imagine moving out of the city to be in a strange new state to start a life with someone she barely knows. 

“Anyway, spoiler alert, we broke up.” 

“I'm sorry, Jake,” Amy says softly. She doesn't know what else she can say. 

“It's ok. It was for the best. We stayed friends, we both stayed in Boston for Rey’s sake. She was almost one by the time we broke up and Sophia loved living there and Rey was in a daycare she liked, there was a lot of space in our neighbourhood for her to learn to run and ride a bike and play soccer. So I moved out of our house and got a place nearby, we shared custody. It wasn't perfect, but it was a life. It was our life. And I got to see Rey all the time and watch Sophia being such a great mom. I got to work my dream job, take Rey to her dance recitals, go to cookouts on the weekend.” Amy isn't sure where this is going. “But I always thought Sophia and me would get back together eventually, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Amy knows that feeling well. 

“I thought we’d be one of those couples who broke up and did their own thing for a while, grew as people, did what they needed to do. And then got back together. But… we just didn't. And I was doing well in my job, and so was she. I was a detective back then.” There's something in his voice which sounds like anger, or guilt, or regret. Amy can't put her finger on which. Maybe it's all three. 

“You were?” She can't hide the surprise in her voice. “That's crazy. I almost joined the police academy. I got accepted but I just decided it wasn't for me.”

“Huh!” He sounds genuinely interested. 

“In another life we could have been partners,” Amy muses. 

“Definitely.” He pauses, drawing in a deep, straying breath. “Sophia… she died. She died, a year ago, and I couldn't fix it.” Amy freezes in place, blood turning to ice. “Rey kept waking up screaming. And nothing I did… nothing I did changed what happened.”

“Jake.” Amy reaches for his hand this time, figuring he needs this more than her. Someone to hold onto. Solid ground. 

“It's ok,” his voice say the opposite of his words. “We moved here, back to New York. It was nice to be close to my mom, and my friends from before. Somewhere familiar, y’know?” Amy nods. “I couldn't go back to being a cop. I can't, right now. So Charles gave me a job here, I enrolled Rey in school and in therapy. Nobody wants to be taking their kid to  _ therapy _ ,” Jake tangles his fingers with Amy’s, squeezing tightly. “But it helps her.” 

“It helps Oscar too,” Amy adds, trying to make Jake feel less alone. She doesn't know what the proper protocol is for your friend telling you the mother of their child died. “Sometimes,” she says, “life just  _ sucks.”  _ They look at each other and then, somehow, they're laughing. It's a heavy, burdened laugh, but it's a laugh all the same. 

Amy leans into Jake’s side, Jake’s chin nudging the top of her head, and it feels so good, just to laugh together. Just to be win someone who understands at least some of this. 

Something changes between them. Amy sits up straighter, and Jake’s face is  _ right there.  _ Amy can see all of the details which make up his skin, can see the flecks of caramel and gold in his eyes. They both stop laughing, and Amy's breath hitches in her throat. She's seconds from kissing him.  _ Kissing him.  _ Amy takes a second to be rational about this as his lips, inevitably, draw closer to hers. Amy stops herself from closing the tiny gap, stops herself from following the instinct that every cell in her body is screaming at her to follow. Amy Santiago is nothing if not rational. And this, this big, life changing thing, is  _ not  _ rational. Amy's had enough big life changing events this year. Jake’s been one of the good things that's helped her to get through it all. He's supportive and funny and kind, and his kid is friends with her kid (she's been thinking of Oscar as  _ her kid  _ more and more recently. It's a panic for another time.). Amy doesn't want to stop being friends with Jake. She doesn't want this to end in a mess and ruin their lives, as well as Oscar and Rey’s lives. They've all been through enough. 

So Amy pulls back. 

“Uh, I just remembered, I have to go!” Amy keeps her voice light and breezy, standing up quickly. It's not a big thing. Their whole dynamic didn't almost change. This was just two friends hanging out, and now she had to go. 

“Oh. Amy I-” Jake struggles to his feet, almost falling over himself as Amy walks away quicker than Jake can catch up to her. 

“It's fine, Jake. I just have to go,” Amy heard that her own voice sounds unnaturally high and fake, but she can't stop it. 

“Amy-”

“I'll see you tomorrow!” Amy walks out of the store quicker than that time that Charles offered her a goat and spinach cinnamon funnel cake. 

  
  


Amy tries her best to pretend that nothing's changed. She goes about her routine as usual, going home and picking up soup from the bodega on the corner on her way. Oscar’s eating with Jessica's parents, and Amy can't face the thought of cooking right now. She knows she's bad enough at it on a regular day, and now her thoughts are clouded with the image of Jake leaning in to kiss her, on replay. She's making lists in her head as she goes through the motions of eating and tidying the apartment. Involuntary lists, that her subconscious is creating and destroying and reformulating, whilst the distractions of folding up laundry and scrubbing the inside of the oven do no good to help. By the time Oscar gets home, Amy is so caught up in her own thoughts that she's barely capable of a strangled smile at his grandparents, fighting with all of her strength not to roll her eyes at them when they bring up the school issue again. 

“Did you have a good time?” Amy asks him, when they’re gone.

“Was ok,” Oscar shrugs, words jumbled through a poorly stifled yawn. 

“What did you do?” She asks, pushing Oscar gently towards his bedroom.

“Went to a fancy restaurant,” he frowns. 

“Not your type of place?” 

“Not really.”

An hour later, when Oscar is sound asleep, blankets up to his chin, face peaceful in the light of his pale blue night light, Amy checks in on him. If there was anything she could have done, anything in the world, to stop him and his parents from getting in their car that night, she would have. The pain of losing her brother and Jessica, the pain at knowing that Oscar will have to spend the rest of his life without his parents, without ever really knowing his parents as people rather than just mom and dad, weighs heavy on Amy, and she’s certain that the sadness will colour everything she does until she herself is gone, hopefully years and years from now. 

But there’s a spark of hope there too, now. A spark of gratefulness that Manny made her Oscar’s godmother. A spark of happiness that she gets to watch him grow up and shape who he’s going to become. 

Christmas is coming up soon, and Amy hasn’t even started her gift shopping yet. Usually, she makes lists and spreadsheets and colour codes everything carefully, the planning beginning as they tidy the Halloween decorations out of the store. This year she hasn’t wanted to think about celebrating with a pit of emptiness in her stomach. She hasn’t wanted to think about Oscar having to spend his first Christmas without his parents. That night, Amy dreams about sitting under a pine tree, strewn with yellow lights, with Oscar, Jake, and Rey, and it wakes her up in a cold sweat at six a.m. She doesn’t want to give Oscar a terrible first Christmas without Manny and Jessica. And she also doesn’t want to lose Jake Peralta as a part of her life. Her subconscious, the part that made the pro and con lists against her will, is screaming at her to stop ignoring the  _ thing _ between them. That she can’t stop pretending nothing has changed, because it has. She’ll have to tread carefully, because there aren’t just two people involved in this, there are four, and everyone involved is sad and maybe a little broken around the edges. Amy decides, at precisely six-eleven in the morning, that she has some thinking to do.

 

Jessica’s parents are in town for two more days, and they pick him up from the apartment the next morning to take him shopping. He frowns into his oatmeal and then sits by the door with his Star Wars backpack, chin in his hands, and whilst Amy wants him to have a good relationship with his grandparents, she remains happy that he’s not desperate to leave with them because his aunt has ruined his life. 

 

After Amy stops ignoring the fact that something has changed between her and Jake, it takes her one whole week of thinking to decide what to do. The first day afterwards is bad, and she doesn’t know what to say to Jake who, at first, avoids her, but she suspects that Charles has a hand in him arriving in the bookstore mid afternoon with coffees. He leaves them on the counter and tries to make a half-hearted joke before shuffling awkwardly away, leaving Amy to feel terrible.

“Dude, what’s going on there?” Rosa asks, appearing behind Amy and snatching up her coffee. There’s one for Gina too, who has been spending an increasing amount of time hanging out in the store when she isn’t needed by Mr Holt. She follows Rosa out from behind a stack of books, and Amy hopes that they’ve just been re-shelving things back there.

“Psshh. Nothing,” Amy waves a hand like it’s no big deal, but this only leads to Rosa and Gina exchanging exasperated glances.

“Right. The silence in the store today is totally because  _ Oscar _ isn’t here,” Rosa folds her arms across her chest, staring Amy down.

“Ames, sweetie,” Gina places her hands on Amy’s shoulders. “We know you and Jake made out.”

“Oh my  _ God _ we did not make out!”

“Mmhmm. Are you sure you know what making out is? It’s when two people-”

“Ok, that’s enough of that,” Amy bats her away, snatching up her own drink.

“But seriously. Don’t break his heart, boo,” Gina says, poking Amy in the collar bone. 

 

On Sunday, Amy and Oscar don’t meet up with Jake and Rey for once, much to Oscar’s disappointment. She takes him to the movies instead and then they go for ice cream afterwards. Oscar asks for his with strawberry sauce, and Amy remembers the stickiness of the sauce on her shirt the day that Jake, quite literally, crashed into her. 

“Do you love Jake?” Oscar asks, with no preamble.

Amy almost drops her ice cream. “What? No! Why would you think that? What made you ask about that? That’s not even a vague... not even any kind of possibility!” 

“You were staring at a picture of him on your phone,” Oscar offers by way of explanation. Amy  _ had _ been doing that earlier on in the day, when she was looking for a reference photo for Rosa’s birthday present on her phone. It had been twenty seconds of staring,  _ maybe _ thirty at a push. 

“My phone froze. It froze, that’s all,” Amy tells him, knowing that he doesn’t believe her from the look he gives her.

 

When Jessica’s parents leave, they drop a stack of school brochures on Amy’s kitchen counter. She puts them in a drawer and spends fifty minutes on the phone to her mom second-guessing every decision she’s made for Oscar so far. After that, she spends a further thirty minutes certain that she can never date again because it would be too much change for Oscar. Too much could go wrong. Amy Santiago follows rules and calculates risk carefully, and this is a risk which just doesn't make sense. This whatever it is: one time date date or mid term relationship or one-true-love-of-her-life. 

 

Before Amy can make up her mind, she bumps into Jake in the morning out front of the Ninety Nine Complex. It's not a literal bump this time, she just happens to be walking in with Oscar at the same time as Jake is walking out. 

“Uh,” Jake stops in his tracks, awkwardly looking around for an exit. Amy stops too, a hand on Oscar’s arm to stop him along with her. 

“Jake.” Amy's struggling with what to say. 

“I'll just-” he gestures past her in the general direction of the street, out past the meatball truck. 

“I just need some time,” she tells him quietly, trying not to let Oscar hear. 

Jake looks up quickly, the same way he did a few weeks ago when they heard the first notes of an ice cream truck. 

“Uh, I thought…” he trails off, squinting at her. “Take all the time you need, Ames,” he tells her softly. 

Any reply that Amy might have come up with is blocked by Doug Judy rolling up on the street and loudly revving the engine of his Pontiac. 

“ _ Judy _ ,” Jake narrows his eyes and hurriedly walks past Amy and Oscar to head towards Doug Judy. 

“Ok. Ok, that could have been worse,” Amy tells herself under her breath. 

“Huh?” Oscar asks, watching her, “can't hear you over the car!”

“Oh, nothing! I was just talking to myself. Let's go in.” Amy doesn't need Oscar to know any more about this than he already does. 

 

Amy busies herself with Christmas. She takes Oscar to pick out a tree and they pull out the decorations from the back of her bedroom closet and spend a happy evening making the apartment feel festive. Amy does a lot of her shopping online, with very little time to actually go shopping. She does some of it in the Ninety Nine complex too, always happy to help out her friend’s businesses. She spends far too much money on toys and clothes for Oscar from Jeffords Junction and Judy’s Linens, respectively, and picks out an antique clock for her mom from Mr Holt’s antiques store. Mr Holt himself has a no gifts rule, which has been in force for as long as she's known him, but she found a loophole long ago in that, as long as she doesn't spend money or too much time on it, Mr Holt will grudgingly accept a gift. This year she gets the picture of all of them eating outside the meatball truck blown up and framed. 

 

Oscar starts to spend some more time with other people, which Amy worries about but also feels oddly happy about, knowing that every day he's becoming more and more like his old self, and maybe so is she. He spends one evening with an old school friend whose mom used to be close with Jessica. She reaches out to Amy on Facebook and picks Oscar up with red rimmed eyes. When Oscar comes back later, his cheeks are pink from the cold and dimpled with smiles. The day after, Amy's mom and dad bring him to their house overnight for the first time since the funeral. She's been hesitant to take him to her parents house too much because Manny is so  _ present  _ in their house. He's in the school pictures on the mantel and his wedding photos line the walls. Some of his teenage belongings are still in his old bedroom, and things from the home he lived in when he died are littering her parents house, no one being able to bring themselves to sell anything yet. Most of it sits in storage, but the stuff at her parents house is an acute, quantifiable reminder of loss. 

 

Amy's parents do something she never expected they would do. They take Oscar to his parents’ graves. It's not like she had been  _ avoiding  _ going there, but she had been sure that it would be too much for Oscar. 

“At some point,” her mom tells her, after he tells Amy their plan to take Oscar to the graves, but before she climbs into the car beside Victor, “you have to stop going around the pain, and go through it.”

“I know that,” Amy insist, wrinkling her nose. “I  _ know. _ ” And she's pretty sure she does know. She's been  _ trying.  _

“Life is precious,” her mom whispers to her as she hugs her tight. “Do something special tonight while we have Oscar. He’ll be fine. You go have fun.” 

 

_ Fun  _ turns out to be wandering around the streets of Brooklyn trying to decide what to do. She knows that if she goes home she’ll end up wrapping Christmas gifts and falling asleep on her couch by nine, and maybe her mom is right, she should do  _ something.  _ She texts Rosa and Gina, but there's radio silence from both of them, and Amy suspects she knows why. She considers calling Terry or Charles or Mr Holt, but knows that they all have lives of their own and work in the morning. Amy has work in the morning, too, but she doesn't want to waste the rare night alone. 

She winds up in the tiny Polish place near her apartment, nursing a cup of hot chocolate. She could go to one of the bars nearby, sure, but Amy isn't feeling anywhere near tragic enough to get drunk by herself on a weeknight. There's a brass band playing somewhere up the street and Amy can hear faint notes of Christmas music drifting into the store as she sits at the back, watching people coming and going. Mostly they're in pairs or groups. There are couples holding hands and picking out food to share together, and groups of friends chattering loudly, and family groups ordering large bags heaped with food. The family groups are the ones that make Amy clutch the cup of hot chocolate tighter, her grip on the hot surface the only thing that stops a lump in her throat from appearing. The worst is when a man comes in with two kids, a boy and a girl, both who look to be around nine or ten. They're laughing and pushing each other whilst their dad orders, the girl’s dark hair dotted with snowflakes. The two of them remind her of herself and Manny as kids so much that she has to swallow the rest of the hot chocolate to drown the lump in her throat, and burns her tongue in the process. 

Once the family is gone, Amy can’t sit still at the table any longer. She knows what she has to do, where she has to go. She owes it to herself, and to Oscar, to her family, to the people around her. She owes it to Manny. She just doesn't think that she can do it alone. 

  
  


The cemetery is quiet and still, illuminated only by white lighting which stretches along the length of the path. Jake meets Amy at the entrance, beside the wrought iron gates. She’d called him as soon as she made up her mind about where she needed to go, before getting on a train. His voice had been calming and safe, and he'd left Rey with his mom and climbed into his beat up old car. 

“Hi,” her voice is wobbly. 

“Hey,” his is relieved. “You're here. Are you ok?” He places a hand gently on her upper arm, his eyes wide, but Amy pushes his hand aside and walks towards him, throwing her arms around his neck. “Oh.” Jake pauses for a split second before wrapping his arms around her back. 

“I just didn't know who else to call,” she tells his shoulder. 

“I'm glad you called me,” he says into her hair. 

 

Her brother’s grave is near the top of the cemetery, along a winding track off of the main path. They use the lights on their phones to navigate their way, Amy leading them. When they reach the two graves, set beside each other and covered in flowers, Amy freezes so suddenly that Jake walks into her. 

“ _ Ow _ , sorry Ames.” He steadies himself, turning to look at the headstones. 

_ ‘Manuel Jose Santiago 1982-2017 _

_ Loving husband, father, son, brother, friend.  _

_ The greatest gift in life is love.’ _

_ ‘Jessica Martina Santiago 1983-2017.  _

_ Mom to Oscar, daughter to Maria and David, wife to Manuel.  _

_ Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me.’ _

It's the strangest thing, Amy thinks, to be looking down at the graves of people you love. People who you laughed and cried with, who you hugged and fought with. In Amy's mind, Manny and Jessica are as solid and real as the moon, shining down through the clouds on the cemetery. But at the same time, they're lying underneath the ground at her feet, turning to dust. It isn't something that Amy can really wrap her head around. It feels, frequently, like her brother and his wife are on an extended vacation and are going to call and come pick Oscar up and everything will go back to normal. 

But this is it now. This is her life. 

There's a bouquet of pink flowers on Jessica's grave with a card filled with Oscar’s chicken scratch, which Amy guessed he and her parents must have dropped off when they visited earlier. There's sunflowers on Manny’s grave with an almost identical card. Amy feels instantly guilty that she wasn't here with him on his first visit to his parents’ grave, and wonders how he handled it. She misses him suddenly, an acute gap by her side where he should be standing. 

“There's so many flowers,” Jake comments. 

“A lot of people loved them,” Amy whispers through the darkness. 

“We planted seeds on Sophia’s grave. Wild meadow flowers.”

“That's a really great idea.”

“I’ll take Rey to visit it again in the new year.”

“Today was Oscar’s first time here.” Amy tells him. He knows that this is  _ her  _ first time here because she told him in a shaky voice over the phone. “He came with my parents.”

“What did he think?” Jake asks. 

“I don't know. I'll ask him when I speak to him.”

“It's something they cover in therapy, anyway. Coping with this,” Jake gestures at the headstones. They stand in silence in front of the graves, listening to the distant traffic. It's cold, and Amy is wishing she'd thought to pick up a warmer jacket because she's starting to feel the December chill now. She shuffles closer to Jake, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. 

“I'm sorry. About before,” she says, quickly, before she can change her mind. “I wanted to kiss you. I just didn't want everything to change, for Oscar. I didn't know what would happen if we got together and then broke up, I didn't want him to lose another important person in his life. I didn't want things to be messed up for Rey, either.” 

“Amy. Stop, you don't need to apologise or give me any kind of explanation. We don't need to talk about it ever again if you don't want to,” he says, but his voice has a raw edge of disappointment to it. 

“No. I… I want to talk about it. Life's too short.”

“Amy Santiago,” he turns to her, looking a little uncertain. “That's the most cliche thing you've ever said.”

Amy hits him lightly on the chest, and when he reaches up to knock her hand away, she catches his fingers, and tangles them with hers. 

  
  


**Nine months later**

Amy always loved first days of school as a kid. A fresh start, with new clothes and a shiny new pencil case and the smell of all of her new books. She guesses that her parents probably loved it as well, after long, hot summers filled with eight noisy children. She doubts that they felt sick with nerves, like she does this morning, on Oscar’s first day of second grade. She and Jake had taken Oscar and Rey on a big first day of school shopping trip, and now Amy's watching the two of them eating cereal in Jake’s kitchen on the last Monday in August. 

“Hey, babe,” Jake’s behind her in the hallway, buttoning up his shirt. Today isn't just the first day of school, it's Jake’s first day back as a detective with the NYPD. 

Amy gasps, “you look  _ beautiful _ ,” she kisses his cheek. 

“Why thank you,” he kisses her temple, “so do you,” he whispers, just for her. Amy's quite sure she doesn't. She's wearing one of Jake’s soft grey t-shirts, too large on her, and a pair of blue gym shorts. She hasn't even brushed her hair yet. 

“Liar,” she hisses. Jake looks shocked before breaking into a smile. 

“Are you guys nearly ready?” He turns to Oscar and Rey, who are talking about the layout of the second grade classroom. Rey’s about to enter third grade, so she's been trying to prepare Oscar for what to expect from second. Amy had homeschooled him for the remainder of first grade, and they'd started on second grade materials somewhere around March, so she's confident that he’ll ace it. 

“We’re ready. We just need to brush our teeth,” Rey declares, standing up and indicating to Oscar that he should follow her. 

“Ok, ok, I'm coming,” he stumbles up from his seat and following Rey. Amy’s pretty sure that Oscar would follow Rey to the ends of the earth. 

“Maybe by the time you get back, Amy will be ready too,” Jake teases. 

“I was  _ organising their bookbags _ ,” Amy explains, and Jake pokes her in the ribs, not mentioning that this was the third time she had organised them. 

“Hey,” he pulls her closer by her elbow. “You ok? About this?” 

He knows how nervous she's been about Oscar going back to school. And she's still nervous,  _ so  _ nervous, and she's going to miss his presence at the bookstore. She’ll miss Jake too, now that he isn't working at Niko’s. Charles had cried when he found out that Jake would be leaving, and Amy had kind of felt like joining him. But this is a good thing, she knows. Over the summer, she and Oscar have been spending more and more time staying at Jake and Rey’s apartment. It's bigger, and has a spare room for Oscar to stay in, and seeing as they spend much of their downtime with Jake and Rey anyway, it just makes sense to stay there. 

Since school let out, Rey’s been hanging out a lot at the Ninety Nine complex in the bookstore too, and Amy's going to miss the presence of all three of them. Three of her favourite people in the world, under the same roof. They've kind of felt like a  _ family _ . And it's an odd feeling, but not an unwelcome one. The cashier at the gift store at the planetarium had referred to Jake and Amy as  _ mom and dad  _ when talking to Rey and Oscar, and nobody had bothered to correct him. At first, it feels like a betrayal to Manny and Jessica, but then Jake reminds her that they chose her for a reason, that they would want Oscar to be happy and to have a normal childhood. That growing up in a family is a way to make that happen. 

“Yeah,” Amy smiles reassuringly. “This is a good thing,” she nods. Rey is giggling in the bathroom, and Amy checks the time on her phone. “Oh no, we’re going to be  _ so late, _ ” she turns away from Jake to head to his bedroom to get herself ready for the day. 

“Oh, hey, I found this in that box of old photos you bought over!” Jake follows her and picks something up from the bedroom dresser, handing it to Amy. She accepts it, feeling its heavy weight in her hands before looking down at it. 

It’s a fat, purple book, pages dog-eared and a little worse for wear. It’s the book she received on her ninth birthday. The book that, as she flicks quickly through the pages, she’s certain contains the plans for a life of a different calibre to the one that she ended up living in. At aged nine, Amy was filled with potential energy, and life could have taken her anywhere she wanted to go. Now, in her thirties, she’s so far off plan that she’s walked off of the edge of the map, yet strangely, there’s nowhere else she’d rather be than surrounded by these people. Her people. 

Amy puts the book down, planning to read it later, and ten minutes later they leave the apartment together, stepping out into the city. Ready for whatever the world throws at them next.  
  



End file.
